In recent years, the increasing amount of pollution found in the streams, rivers, wells, lakes and like sources used by local governments as sources for drinking water has raised the concerns of many. The sources of pollutants found in drinking water range from factory discharge and waste to the very chlorination process used by city water systems. Consequently, concern has grown regarding the scarcity of fresh drinking water. As a result, it is believed that the market for distilled bottled water and home distilling units will grow as public awareness increases.
In most circumstances, purchasing distilled bottled water for consumption at home would not be very practical because of the cost and the inconvenience associated with storing the water containers, handling the somewhat heavy containers and disposing of the container when empty. Consequently, home distilling units have a potential of becoming popular.
The general concept of a table-top distilling unit is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,052,267 to McFee. Home distilling units also have been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,946,558 as being combined with hot water heaters in an effort to save energy, by utilizing the waste heat generated from the distillation function to preheat the water entering the hot water heater.
Other configurations of distilling units designed to conserve energy are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,589,406 to Latham which utilizes the waste heat from an internal combustion engine used to drive the compressor associated with the distilling unit, and U.S. Pat. No. 2,479,766 to Mulvany which recovers and purifies water from the exhaust of an aircraft.
A distilling unit which takes advantage of the thermodynamic properties of refrigerants is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,227,027 to Topper. The device disclosed in Topper is a distillation unit having a heat pump system including a closed refrigerant circuit. The system utilizes condensed refrigerant to facilitate the boiling of the water and refrigerant vapor for absorbing and reclaiming the heat of the distillate in its condensation stage.
However, the known prior an does not teach a successful combination of a home refrigerator and a water distillation system which utilizes the waste heat from the condenser coils of the refrigerator to preheat the water moving to the distiller, and which uses a chilled compartment of the refrigerator to enhance the condensing of the purified vapors from the distiller so as to provide a convenient source of chilled purified water for driving and ice making at the refrigerator.